Growing up in Moscow in the 1970s before the crumbling of the Soviet Union, Ms. Meyerson, who now teaches history at Moscow’s School No. 57, was such a starry-eyed goody-goody that when the national anthem was played on television, she stood and saluted. Reports of social problems in the United States only reinforced her certainty that she was lucky to live in a nation promoted as “the country of happy childhood.”

A 1977 scene of an enormous pageant saluting Leonid Brezhnev, in which children wore matching red caps and scarves and white shirts with epaulettes while spouting propaganda, recalls similar rallies in North Korea.

Ms. Meyerson and her husband, Borya, who also teaches history at the school, are the most prominent of the five Muscovites, four of whom were classmates, whose lives are profiled in the film. The documentary was directed, co-produced and shot by Ms. Hessman, an American who from 1991 to 1999 lived in Moscow, where she produced “Ulitsa Sezam,” the Russian “Sesame Street.”

“My Perestroika” gives you a privileged sense of learning the history of a place not from a book but from the people who lived it. Watching it is a little like attending a party in an unfamiliar city and discovering the place’s secrets from the guests. The film is a seamlessly woven montage of home movies, newsreel excerpts and Ms. Hessman’s extensive footage of the five, now grown up and living their lives.

There are no dry talking heads, no droning lists of Soviet leaders and events, just raw experience. The movie has something in common with Michael Apted’s continuing “Up” series, which has tracked the lives of Britons at seven-year intervals, beginning at age 7.

Olga Durikova, whom Borya remembers as the best-looking girl in their class, recalls the ’90s era of cowboy capitalism, gangs and crime. But she says she felt safe because most of the violence was directed by one faction against another. Now a single mother living with her son, her sister and her nephew in their childhood apartment, she works for a company that rents billiard tables. She voices a certain nostalgia for Communism, because in those days, she insists, life was less stressful. You held a job for a lifetime and received a steady pension when you retired at 60.

Ruslan Stupin, who for 12 years played in a punk-rock band, is a feisty rebel who lives off the grid and is seen busking in a Moscow subway station. The most successful of the five, Andrei Yevgrafov, developed a chain of high-end men’s wear stores and lives in a luxurious condominium.

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You might say that all five stepped through the looking glass of history. The change from one society to another was so profound that there is no way they can satisfactorily explain life under Communism to their children. As Communism died, the widespread floundering for a new ideology to embrace led to vogues in hypnotic healing and church attendance.

The empire’s final gasp, the attempted coup by old-guard hard-liners in August 1991, is recalled with some cynicism. The massed protesters, Mr. Yevgrafov suggests, were reacting more to the scarcity of food than to the threat of a return to Communism. During the crisis, every channel on Russian television showed the ballet “Swan Lake,” a practice the State followed during major events.

If Mr. Meyerson is not happy about life under Vladimir V. Putin and Dmitri A. Medvedev, a time of aggressively showy patriotism, he doesn’t foresee a return to Communism.

As you watch “My Perestroika,” the similarities are striking between the anti-United States propaganda of the old Soviet Union and America’s use of terms like “evil empire.” A susceptibility to paranoia seems to be universal. The Russian children were told, as were their American counterparts, that their government wanted only peace; it was the other side that was the dangerous aggressor.

Opening as the Middle East is experiencing the same political convulsions that brought down the Soviet Union, “My Perestroika” is also astoundingly timely. Change, it seems, is the only constant.

MY PERESTROIKA

Opens on Wednesday in Manhattan.

Directed by Robin Hessman; director of photography, Ms. Hessman; edited by Alla Kovgan and Garret Savage; music by Lev Zhurbin; produced by Ms. Hessman and Rachel Wexler; released by International Film Circuit. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. In Russian, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. This film is not rated.

My Perestroika

NYT Critic’s Pick

DirectorRobin Hessman

Running Time1h 28m

GenresDocumentary, Biography, Family, History, News

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Last updated: Nov 2, 2017

A version of this review appears in print on March 23, 2011, on Page C4 of the New York edition with the headline: Through the Looking Glass of History. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe